Predicting Teachers' Sense of Efficacy and Job Satisfaction Using School Climate and Participatory Decision Making.

Taylor, Dianne L.; Tashakkori, Abbas

This study examined the relationship of teacher decisional participation and school climate to teachers' sense of efficacy and their job satisfaction. Data came from the National Education Longitudinal Study of 1988 (NELS-88) project, involving 1,035 schools with eighth grade students, and from the 1990 follow up of 1,296 schools. The final data set involved 9,987 teachers and 27,994 ratings of students. Results indicate that school climate has a noteworthy association with job satisfaction; however, the relationship between climate and sense of efficacy is limited. Climate was found to be composed of three elements: principal leadership, faculty collegiality, and student discipline. Each of these climate components had a relatively strong association with teachers' feelings of job satisfaction. Participation in decision making did not explain as much of the variance in job satisfaction as the climate variables, and accounted for very little of the variance in teachers' sense of efficacy. Results tentatively suggest that satisfaction mediates the relationship between perceptions of school climate and a sense of efficacy. (Contains 35 references.) (JDD)